Welcome

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fl. — Throughout history, politically powerful human beings carved up the physical world into nation-states. Almost everybody was assigned citizenship under a particular form of government or constitution. Now, as history repeats itself in the virtual world with online domains like .com, .net, .org and .edu, not everybody is content to play by the same rules of the past.

One of these rebels is John Tanzella, president and chief executive officer of the International Gay & Lesbian Travel Association (IGLTA) based in Fort Lauderdale, yet operating in more than 80 countries. From its perch in Broward County, the 32-year-old IGLTA promotes all of the businesses with a stake in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender leisure, tourism and commerce. This segment of the industry is estimated to be a $70 billion market domestically.

MIAMI, Fl. (AP) — The United States and Cuba have agreed to establish diplomatic relations and open economic and travel ties, marking the most significant shift in U.S. policy toward the communist island in decades, American officials said Wednesday.

The announcement comes amid a series of new confidence-building measures between the longtime foes, including the release of American Alan Gross, as well as a swap for a U.S. intelligence asset held in Cuba and the freeing of three Cubans jailed in the U.S.

President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro were to separately address their nations around noon Wednesday. The two leaders spoke by phone for more than 45 minutes Tuesday, the first substantive presidential-level discussion between the U.S. and Cuba since 1961.

A two-day International Green Bank Summit concluded Nov. 20 with international and U.S.-based public-private financing organizations coming together to discuss best practices, share technical expertise and to strengthen the growing “Green Bank” network.

NEW YORK, Ny. (press release) – The purpose of the summit was to discuss how to advance emerging clean energy markets by harnessing commercial practices, mobilizing private sector participation, and adopting a common framework, easily understood by private sector partners and the public-at-large.

The Green Banks represented at the summit, which was hosted by NY Green Bank, collectively expect to deploy over US$15B in capital for investments in clean energy and energy efficiency projects, which could be leveraged to over US $40B total investment into global and local clean energy capital markets over the next five years.